roll a new love over

I must go to bed at once - my writing retreat/vacation is rapidly drawing to a close, and I'm so not excited to go back to the real world. Actually, that may not be true; I am excited to sleep in my own bed and maybe not go anywhere major for a few weeks (although I do have a wedding fourth of July weekend and also will probably have to sneak away and do a writing retreat on my own at some point). But I'm feeling like I'm really getting into the story, and it's going to be a challenge to stay in it and not get sucked back into the day job, particularly since my boss will be out the two weeks after I get back and so I'm sure I'll get dragged into things to sub for him. C'est la vie, I guess.

But today was great, albeit not as productive as I would have hoped. I didn't get out of bed until 9:30ish, at which point I was going to make tea and crawl back into bed with my laptop like I did yesterday...instead, I helped Tina with something for an hour and a half, which was something I'd planned to help her with, but it didn't really help me to get words on the page. Then I showered, lured some other people into playing hooky with me, and drove to the Starbucks in East Hampton. It's only twenty minutes from here, but it felt like a much longer journey, if only because East Hampton is super posh compared to Montauk and the people watching and window shopping were delightful. We actually weren't playing hooky; we worked for a couple of hours, and I got six pages in, so that was a plus. I also bought my usual Starbucks mug for the Hamptons, which I will drink from when I want to feel extra fancy.

We had to come back so that Barbara could do a conference call, so I spent the next hour snacking and slacking. The snack was ill-advised, since we were looking for places to have dinner and ended up getting a 5:15pm reservation at an awesome place down the street...but since we made the reservation at 4:50, that was a little late to change the fact that I'd just had a bowl of chili. Oops. But the food was awesome, even if the chef is a bit of a prima donna who refuses to do any requests. And it was a great beginning to the end of our retreat; Tina is leaving in the morning, and so while the rest of us are all staying until Sunday, we wanted to do a fancy meal before she left. We were back in the house before sunset, and I spent the rest of the evening answering ridiculously old emails and taking care of business stuff since I was no longer in the mood (or required sobriety level) to write. And I had my now-traditional ridiculously entertaining late-night conversation with Anne and Bella, so I'm glad I stayed up even if my morning self will hate me for it.

But now I really must sleep; I have to take Tina to the train station in the morning, and then I want to write all day. Goodnight!